lifestyles Recently while helping a friend remove a broken tree limb I was reminded of two important lessons: 1. Extension ladders and chain saws don’t mix. 2. Whether I like it or not, believe it or not, or accept it or not, I cannot defy gravity! Thankfully there were no serious injuries that day. God has natural...
Brainerd, 56401

Brainerd MN 506 James St. / PO Box 974 56401

2012-08-19 15:32:42

Recently while helping a friend remove a broken tree limb I was reminded of two important lessons: 1. Extension ladders and chain saws don’t mix. 2. Whether I like it or not, believe it or not, or accept it or not, I cannot defy gravity! Thankfully there were no serious injuries that day.

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God has natural laws in his universe that we cannot defy without some consequence. He also has ethical laws that we cannot defy without consequence.

Marriage is one such ethic. Much is being discussed and promoted about what marriage ought to be. What is God‘s absolute ethical standard concerning marriage?

We begin to see his standard in the creation account in Genesis 1 where God created humanity as male and female. God’s Word shows that his design for marriage was that it was to be between a man and a woman, “Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.” (Genesis 2:24) This design of God is encouraged and commended in places such as the Old Testament book of Song of Solomon and New Testament statements such as Mark 10:7-9 ‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.’ So they are no longer two but one flesh. “What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate.”

Similarly, violations of this beautiful design for marriage and family are discouraged and condemned: In the Old Testament we see clear statements such as Leviticus 20:13 “If a man lies with a male as with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination...” and in the New Testament revelation such as Romans 1:27 “and the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another, men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in themselves the due penalty for their error” and Hebrews 13:4 “Let marriage be held in honor among all, and let the marriage bed be undefiled, for God will judge the sexually immoral and adulterous.”

The singer Carrie Underwood recently gave her approval to same sex marriage when she said, “We should all be free to love.”

However palatable this reasoning may sound we must ask, “How far should our ‘freedoms to love’ go?” Is there anything off limits or is our desire to love someone all that should guide us? Taken without absolute truth to guide us this becomes a very slippery slope. Following this logic, without the restraint of absolute truth, would lead to conclusions by which most everyone reading this article would be repulsed. For instance who would advocate using the expression “We should all be free to love” as Carrie did and say a father is free to love his daughter, or a husband is free to love two women, or a husband is free to love his wife and another man, or a woman is free to love a young boy? We quickly realize we all believe in some absolutes that would keep us from accepting some of what was just purported.

I couldn’t defy gravity when I climbed the tree to remove the broken limb. We cannot defy God’s ethics without some serious consequences!

Centuries ago the great reformer Martin Luther said, “If I profess with the loudest voice and clearest exposition every portion of the truth of God except precisely that little point which the world and the devil are at that moment attacking, I am not confessing Christ, however boldly I may be professing Christ.”

Would you stand for the truth this November, as 31 other states in our union have done, and vote in favor of the amendment defining marriage according to God’s perfect standard of one man and one woman?